Content with Truth

My regular contribution to Touchstone is still titled “The
Leading Edge,” but it is time to issue a disclaimer. I am no longer the
leading edge of the Intelligent Design movement. In retirement from my career
as a law professor at the age of 69, I am content to play a supporting role
for a new generation of superbly qualified scientists and scholars who have
taken over the responsibilities of leadership.

Prominent among these new leaders is Dr. Stephen Meyer, whose magisterial
explication of the cell’s protein synthesis and DNA replication processes
can be read in his new book, Signature in the Cell, published in
2009 by HarperOne. The book will probably be trashed by frantic materialists,
but open-minded readers will have no difficulty seeing how the evidence of
biology, considered impartially, points unmistakably to the role of an intelligent
cause in the origin of the cell, however unacceptable that conclusion may be
to biologists trained to assume that their discipline is founded upon a commitment
to materialism, and that a new Dark Age will be upon us if that commitment
falters. Insofar as biologists cling to the belief that a combination of chance
and physical law produced the first cell with its machinery, they do so not because of
what they know about the cell, but in spite of what they know.

The Origin of Darwinism

Meyer’s book is our most important scientific product for the time
being, but I am happy to be able to say that my colleagues have also produced
significant new work in the history of science and have thus shed important
new light on the origins of Darwinism. On that subject, I would particularly
urge readers to obtain a copy of Catholic philosopher Benjamin Wiker’s
stunning new biography of Charles Darwin, The Darwin Myth. I also
highly recommend Dr. Michael Flannery’s book, Alfred Russel Wallace’s
Theory of Intelligent Evolution (see Denyse O’Leary’s review
in this issue) .

Wallace, the co-framer of the theory of evolution by natural selection, was
a forerunner of the modern Intelligent Design movement, for in the evidence
that Darwin interpreted in the light of his own materialist commitment, Wallace
saw a basis for concluding that biology seemed to have a directed nature, as
if its evolution were superintended by a purposeful creator.

Both books help to set straight a misunderstanding of Darwin’s intellectual
life that stems originally from Charles Darwin himself, and that has been promoted
by generations of biologists who have wanted to present Darwin as the ideal
of an empirical scientist rather than as a man determined to fit the evidence
into a pre-determined metaphysical commitment.

Central to the misunderstanding of Darwin’s thinking is the common
stereotype that says that Darwin’s commitment to evolution and materialism
stemmed initially from his study of the specimens he collected on the famous
voyage of the Beagle. The distortion here is in supposing that it
was only when Darwin had an opportunity to observe specimens from different
parts of the world that his thinking turned in the direction of a Godless evolutionary
process.

Wiker and Flannery both make clear that the crucial change in the direction
of Darwin’s thought began when he was a student in Edinburgh. There he
fell under the influence of radical fellow students who were promoting a materialist
philosophy and wanted to claim the authority of science for their ideology.
The theory was the child of the philosophy, not a necessary inference from
specimens Darwin found on his travels.

A New Task

The task of our scientists and historians now is to publish work of outstanding
quality that will speak for itself when it gets an opportunity to be heard,
while staying away from public-school conflicts that generate frantic opposition
and messy litigation. Our faith must be that truth eventually overcomes error,
however powerful may be the vested interests that stand in defense of error.
If the scientific world is so dominated by these interests that it cannot understand
new thinking, we must await a better day in which that community itself recognizes
that better thinking is necessary.

As to whether the Intelligent Design movement has been defeated or has already
won the most significant battle, no one can give an answer until the last word
is spoken. That the materialists have won a few judicial rulings on the way
will seem insignificant once the final verdict is in, and that verdict will
be in favor of truth. •

Phillip E. Johnson is Professor of Law (emeritus) at the University of California at Berkeley. He is the author of Darwin on Trial, The Wedge of Truth, The Right Questions (InterVarsity Press), and other books challenging the naturalistic assumptions that dominate modern culture. He is a contributing editor of Touchstone.

“Content with Truth” first appeared in the November/December 2009 issue of Touchstone. If you enjoyed this article, you'll find more of the same in every issue.

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